Abimelech - The Worthless Thorn Bush - Part 2 (Judges 9:22-57)
INTRODUCTION:
Last week we were introduced to a son of Gideon, a son born to him by a concubine from Shechem. Gideon named this son Abimelech, which means “my father is king.” When Gideon died, Abimelech decided that he would succeed his father as king. Gideon had only lived like a king; Abimelech wanted the title and the authority of a king. He went to his family in Shechem to gain their support and to speak to the city leaders asking if they wanted to be ruled by the 70 sons of Gideon or by the one who was a son of Shechem, born to a citizen of Shechem. They decide to make their relative their king and to stand with him against any opposition. With the help of a band of worthless and reckless men hired by Abimelech, he murders the 70 sons of Gideon on one stone, almost 70, one escapes by hiding, Gideon’s youngest son Jotham.
The leaders of Shechem show their approval of what Abimelech had done by crowning him as their king. When Jotham hears that his half-brother has been crowned king he speaks out against the treachery and unfaithfulness the people of Shechem have shown toward his father and he pronounces a curse on Abimelech and the leaders of Shechem. Jotham then flees the area going far away and out of reach of his half-brother Abimelech. This morning we will see the retribution of God as Jotham’s curse is fulfilled. Let’s pray and then read out passage.
--PRAY--
SCRIPTURE:
Turn in your Bibles to Judges 9:22-57. Again, I will not be touching on every verse but will be hitting the highlights of this history of the bramble king of Israel. Please, if you are able, stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word and follow along while I read.
Judges 9:22-57,
“Now Abimelech ruled over Israel three years. Then God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem; and the men of Shechem dealt treacherously with Abimelech, so that the violence done to the seventy sons of Jerubbaal might come, and their blood might be laid on Abimelech their brother, who killed them, and on the men of Shechem, who strengthened his hands to kill his brothers. The men of Shechem set men in ambush against him on the tops of the mountains, and they robbed all who might pass by them along the road; and it was told to Abimelech. Now Gaal the son of Ebed came with his relatives, and crossed over into Shechem; and the men of Shechem put their trust in him. They went out into the field and gathered the grapes of their vineyards and trod them, and held a festival; and they went into the house of their god, and ate and drank and cursed Abimelech. Then Gaal the son of Ebed said, ‘Who is Abimelech, and who is Shechem, that we should serve him? Is he not the son of Jerubbaal, and is Zebul not his lieutenant? Serve the men of Hamor the father of Shechem; but why should we serve him? Would, therefore, that this people were under my authority! Then I would remove Abimelech.’ And he said to Abimelech, ‘Increase your army and come out.’ When Zebul the ruler of the city heard the words of Gaal the son of Ebed, his anger burned. He sent messengers to Abimelech deceitfully, saying, ‘Behold, Gaal the son of Ebed and his relatives have come to Shechem; and behold, they are stirring up the city against you. Now therefore, arise by night, you and the people who are with you, and lie in wait in the field. In the morning, as soon as the sun is up, you shall rise early and rush upon the city; and behold, when he and the people who are with him come out against you, you shall do to them whatever you can.’ So Abimelech and all the people who were with him arose by night and lay in wait against Shechem in four companies. Now Gaal the son of Ebed went out and stood in the entrance of the city gate; and Abimelech and the people who were with him arose from the ambush. When Gaal saw the people, he said to Zebul, ‘Look, people are coming down from the tops of the mountains.’ But Zebul said to him, ‘You are seeing the shadow of the mountains as if they were men.’ Gaal spoke again and said, ‘Behold, people are coming down from the highest part of the land, and one company comes by the way of the diviners’ oak.’ Then Zebul said to him, ‘Where is your boasting now with which you said, “Who is Abimelech that we should serve him?” Is this not the people whom you despised? Go out now and fight with them!’ So Gaal went out before the leaders of Shechem and fought with Abimelech. Abimelech chased him, and he fled before him; and many fell wounded up to the entrance of the gate. Then Abimelech remained at Arumah, but Zebul drove out Gaal and his relatives so that they could not remain in Shechem. Now it came about the next day, that the people went out to the field, and it was told to Abimelech. So he took his people and divided them into three companies, and lay in wait in the field; when he looked and saw the people coming out from the city, he arose against them and slew them. Then Abimelech and the company who was with him dashed forward and stood in the entrance of the city gate; the other two companies then dashed against all who were in the field and slew them. Abimelech fought against the city all that day, and he captured the city and killed the people who were in it; then he razed the city and sowed it with salt. When all the leaders of the tower of Shechem heard of it, they entered the inner chamber of the temple of El-berith. It was told Abimelech that all the leaders of the tower of Shechem were gathered together. So Abimelech went up to Mount Zalmon, he and all the people who were with him; and Abimelech took an axe in his hand and cut down a branch from the trees, and lifted it and laid it on his shoulder. Then he said to the people who were with him, ‘What you have seen me do, hurry and do likewise.’ All the people also cut down each one his branch and followed Abimelech, and put them on the inner chamber and set the inner chamber on fire over those inside, so that all the men of the tower of Shechem also died, about a thousand men and women. Then Abimelech went to Thebez, and he camped against Thebez and captured it. But there was a strong tower in the center of the city, and all the men and women with all the leaders of the city fled there and shut themselves in; and they went up on the roof of the tower. So Abimelech came to the tower and fought against it, and approached the entrance of the tower to burn it with fire. But a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head, crushing his skull. Then he called quickly to the young man, his armor bearer, and said to him, ‘Draw your sword and kill me, so that it will not be said of me, “A woman slew him.”’ So the young man pierced him through, and he died. When the men of Israel saw that Abimelech was dead, each departed to his home. Thus God repaid the wickedness of Abimelech, which he had done to his father in killing his seventy brothers. Also God returned all the wickedness of the men of Shechem on their heads, and the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal came upon them.” (Judges 9:22–57, NASB95)[1]
KINGDOM TROUBLE (Judges 9:22-25)
So far in the book of Judges the length that a judge ruled is given to us at the end of their history, usually in the form of the land having rest for an extended period of time, usually ending at the death of the judge. But we see some differences with the history of Abimelech. First, he is not a judge that God raised up to deliver Israel, instead he is a self-declared king in Israel and instead of the length of his reign being given at the end of his life, the length of his rule is stated at the outset, and the history immediately turns to the account of his downfall. The only information that we are given about the three years of Abimelech’s reign is that he ruled over Israel. This does not mean that he ruled the whole land of Israel, he was only crowned king by the leaders of Shechem, but his kingdom covered a portion of Israel and since he was the only “king” he was considered the “king of Israel.” How he enforced his authority over the nation is all passed over in silence. What we must understand about the reign of Abimelech is that it did not last because of the dire prediction of retribution that Jotham had spoken against him and the leaders of Shechem which just three years after they were spoken began to take effect.
Verse 23 announces that things started to go wrong when “…God sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem…” (Judges 9:23a, NASB95)[2] This statement is important for several reasons. It shows that the parable and the curse that Jotham spoke against Abimelech and the men of Shechem did not have any power in itself to bring retribution on them. His words had no magical powers, as curses are sometimes thought to have, rather his words depended upon God acting on his behalf to put what he had spoken against his half-brother and the people of Shechem into effect. Jotham’s words left the evil which Abimelech had done in God’s hands, leaving them for God to deal with in His own time and in His own way. God did this by sending an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem. This in itself may be disturbing to us. Not only does it disturb and fatally weaken Abimelech’s fragile power base, but it also raises the unsettling question of God’s relationship to evil and also causes us to ask if God sends such a spirit does it excuse the persons involved from the responsibility of their actions? This last question cannot be true, because if it were, it would undermine the theme of retribution that runs through this entire passage. This passage is not about people being released from the responsibility of what they have done but instead it is about them being held accountable for it. Nor must we ever think that God’s intervention in this way means the He Himself is tainted with evil, for if He were, He would not be holy. He did not make this spirit evil, but made this evil spirit serve His own good purpose of punishing evil men for the evil they had done.
The first effect that this evil spirit had between Abimelech and the men of Shechem was that the men of Shechem who had been Abimelech’s supporters, now begin to act against him, instead of for him. Shechem was located just east of a narrow pass between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, it was the trade route pass and on tops of these mountains, scouts could be placed and could see and warn of potential attacks by enemies, and at the beginning of his reign as he was trying to consolidate his power in Israel, Abimelech may have used this pass for this purpose. Now the men of Shechem are using this to their advantage to rob everyone who passes through the pass, ambushing them, thus creating a situation that destabilized Abimelech’s kingdom and made it look like he could not protect travelers or caravans that might have traded with his kingdom but who would now look for alternate routes to avoid the area. The roads would become deserted, and people would stay off of them like in the days of Shamgar and Jael. Someone still loyal told Abimelech that the people of Shechem were acting treacherously against him. It was not good news; he could no longer trust those who had put him in power. This was just the beginning, it was going to get much worse.
KINGDOM BETRAYAL (Judges 9:26-33)
The situation and the disloyalty of Abimelech’s subjects in Shechem provides a situation for someone else to make a bid for power, to play off the dissatisfaction of the people of Shechem with Abimelech. From out of nowhere it seems, Gaal the son of Ebed arrives in Shechem and he is not alone but comes with his relatives and they settle in Shechem, and he begins to stir up the people and encourage their dissatisfaction with their king. The leaders of Shechem change sides and align themselves with Gaal. He seems to claim that he has a right to rule in Shechem because he is a descendant of Hamor, the founder of the city. If this is so, then this is bad for Abimelech. He had come to power with the support of his relatives and now Gaal has arrived with his relatives. Abimelech had claimed to be a true Shechemite, but if Gaal truly is a descendant of Hamor, he has an even stronger basis for making this claim. Abimelech can only claim to be half Shechemite.
Gaal and those supporting him do not immediately confront Abimelech, but they do begin sowing seeds of discord among the people. Finally at the harvest festival following the grape harvest, after the people of Shechem have had their fill of food and drink they begin to curse Abimelech. Gaal sees this as his opportunity to stir up this crowd and present himself as the man to liberate Shechem from their oppressor, Abimelech. Zebul, who is the governor of the city under Abimelech, is also maligned by Gaal and becomes angry. As Gaal speaks the people begin to rally around him, Zebul realizes that things are getting out of hand, and he immediately sends messengers to Abimelech urging him to come and set ambushes against the city before Gaal has a chance to fortify the city and prepare for battle. The situation has become dire, and conflict is now inevitable. Abimelech has been betrayed by most of the city.
KINGDOM BATTLE (Judges 9:34-41)
Abimelech takes the advice given to him by Zebul, now understanding the full betrayal of Shechem and that a usurper is in the city trying to take the throne. Using some of the same strategy as his father Gideon had used, Abimelech divides his forces into four groups, and they take up places near the city during the night with an attack planned for the morning. This division of his troops would allow them to surround Gaal’s forces as they came out of the city and would confuse the enemy to the true size of Abimelech’s forces until it was too late. This strategy works.
Early the next morning Gaal goes and stands outside the city gate. When he is seen outside the city gate, some of Abimelech’s troops begin to move down the mountains toward the city. Gaal immediately sees the movement. Upon seeing them he strikes up a conversation with of all people Zebul who is also there waiting to see Abimelech attack. Gaal says he sees people coming down from the tops of the mountains. Zebul answers him deceitfully with the intent of delaying as long as possible, Gaal’s recognition of the real situation he is facing. Zebul replies that Gaal’s eyes are playing tricks on him, all that he is really seeing is the shifting shadows cast by the mountains in the first light of dawn. Then Gaal sees two more groups of people coming from different directions. Gaal begins to realize that all is not right. As the truth of what he is seeing becomes clear, Zebul begins to taunt Gaal urging him to back up his words of the night before and go out and fight with Abimelech’s forces.
So Gaal leads out the forces of Shechem to go to battle against Abimelech. We are not given many details about the battle itself. It was really no contest as Abimelech’s forces out maneuvered Gaal and he retreats, losing a lot of his men in the process. Gaal and some men make it back into the city, but the sentiment that was felt towards them is no more and Zebul drives Gaal and his relatives out of the city and we never hear of them again. Abimelech does not stay in Shechem but leaves it in the capable hands of Zebul and goes and lodges in Arumah a few miles to the southwest of Shechem. The fact that he did not stay in Shechem and did not move far from it suggests that he has some unsettled business with the people of Shechem. They have betrayed him and acted treacherously against him, and they have not yet felt the full force of his rage.
Like Gideon and his relentless pursuit of the two kings of Midian, Abimelech is not satisfied with his victory at Shechem that day. He has been crossed and he has been betrayed by the people of Shechem and he will not stop, he cannot rest until he has utterly crushed and destroyed all those who have betrayed him. This is the way arrogant men react when crossed, they fly into a rage, and they seek their revenge. Such uncontrolled rage is dangerous. It makes people lose perspective, they begin to trust no one, they see enemies everywhere, in their rage they kill the innocent along with the guilty, and in the end, they overreach themselves and bring about their own destruction.
KINGDOM DESTRUCTION (Judges 9:42-57)
We read that the day after the battle the people of the city went out to the field, we are not told why they went out to the field, but someone thought it was worth alerting Abimelech. They let him know the people were out in the open and the city gate was open. Whatever the reason that they went out of the city, Abimelech see this as his opportunity to get his revenge. The way verses 43-45 are written seems to indicate that what happens next takes place on the following day. Again, Abimelech divides his people into three groups, and they hide in the fields and when the people came out of the city they rose up and slew them. Unlike the battle with Gaal, this one is fought against unarmed civilians, and it is carried out to a far more extreme end. It is not a battle at all, it is a massacre conducted with ruthless efficiency. Abimelech does not stop with just the destruction of the people, but he razes the whole city, destroying it completely and symbolically sowing is with salt as a way of cursing it and delivering it over to unending desolation.
But this is not the end, some of the leaders of the city and leaders of the tower of Shechem have escaped into the tower. This was part of the stronghold of their god El-berith which must have been located outside the city walls. The tower was designed to be a last place of refuge if the city itself fell. Seeing the complete destruction of the city, those not killed in the slaughter crowd into the tower to await their fate. They do not have to wait long. Determined that no one in the city would survive Abimelech commands his men to help him gather wood and stack it against the tower. Then he turns the tower into an oven when they torch the wood killing everyone inside, about 1000 men and women. Fire has gone forth from the worthless bramble king and destroyed the people of Shechem just as Jotham had said. This act should have satisfied Abimelech’s lust for revenge, but it did not. He is drunk with power now and cannot stop. And for him power equals slaughter. That is how it was from the beginning, and how it will be until his end. Abimelech knows no other way to live or die.
He moves a few miles northeast of Shechem to the town of Thebez, this is the first it is mentioned, and we are not told why Abimelech decided to attack it. Had some of the people of Shechem fled here? Or was it simply a convenient target for a man whose rage was now out of control? We are not told. There is no need for a rational explanation. Abimelech has reached the point in his rage where he is paranoid, and it is the nature of paranoia to destroy rationality and cause leaders who suffer from it to commit excesses that eventually bring about their own ruin. This attack on Thebez is precisely what is going to happen.
At the beginning there is no sign at all that Abimelech is doomed. He camps against the city and captures it. The citizens flee to their tower and lock themselves inside and go up onto the roof of the tower. It looks as if Abimelech is going to destroy this tower and its inhabitants in the same efficient way that he had destroyed the one in Shechem. But there is a woman in the tower who carried with her into the tower or found in the tower an upper millstone. This is a small, but heavy upper stone of a hand operated grain grinder. Not massive, but heavy enough to do a lot of damage if dropped from a height and well-aimed. This woman positioned herself above the door to the tower, the most vulnerable point of the tower, this is where the enemy who wanted to destroy it would come to try to break it down or burn it. Like Jael with her hammer and tent peg, this woman is armed and deadly and she is determined not to waste her one chance to achieve her goal, to kill the king. It is a well-set trap, and Abimelech who now believes himself invulnerable, steps right into it. He approaches the door to set fire to it, and at that precise moment this woman hurls her millstone down the side of the tower, and it hits Abimelech in the head crushing his skull. Abimelech is fatally wounded, and he knows it, but he cannot face the shame of being killed by a woman; so, he asks his armor bearer to draw his sword and kill him, which he does. He dies by assisted suicide, a violent end to a violent man. As for his followers, seeing their leader dead they simply disperse and go everyone to his own home, to try and resume something of a normal existence, with nothing gained and much lost. It is interesting to note that Abimelech’s troops, those worthless and reckless men that he gathered around him were Israelites even though he had painted himself as a Shechemite. There are no winners here except God. This is only the second time in this passage that God is mentioned. He was first mentioned sending the evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem. Now he is mentioned in this last two verses as the One behind the scenes fulfilling His purpose. The author writes, “Thus God repaid the wickedness of Abimelech, which he had done to his father in killing his seventy brothers. Also God returned all the wickedness of the men of Shechem on their heads, and the curse of Jotham the son of Jerubbaal came upon them.” (Judges 9:56–57, NASB95)[3]
CONCLUSION:
The history of Abimelech is about retribution. The histories of the judges that precede and follow Abimelech’s history are about God saving people who do not deserve to be saved, because they have done evil in His sight. In other words, they are histories of God’s grace to sinners. This is not true of the history of Abimelech, it is not God showing grace to the undeserving, but instead about God giving them exactly what they deserve. It is a record of divine judgment carried out with divine precision. God sets everything in motion when He sends the evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of Shechem and we see a relentless, repeating pattern through the rest of the history. Abimelech going to Shechem to incite the leaders to conspire against Gideon’s sons is answered by Gaal’s arrival in Shechem to incite the leaders to conspire with him against Abimelech. The ambushes that the men of Shechem were setting against Abimelech in verse 25 is answered by the ambush set by Abimelech against Shechem in verse 34. Abimelech, who killed all Gideon’s sons on one stone in verse 5 is himself killed by one stone thrown from the tower of Thebez in verse 53. As the history unfolds, act answers to act and evil to evil. The evil spirit sent by God to begin the process itself answers to the evil committed by Abimelech and his supporters. The evil spirit is not removed until the chief instigator of the evil is struck down and his followers are scattered to try and pick up the remaining pieces of their shattered lives. It is a sad and sobering history that has at least two important things to teach us.
First, God is not obligated to show grace to sinners. He is perfectly within His rights to punish them exactly as they deserve. Praise God that judgment is not His preferred option or there would be no hope for any of us. Ezekiel 33:11 states, ““Say to them, ‘As I live!’ declares the Lord God, ‘I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways!’” (Ezekiel 33:11a, NASB95)[4] Rescue, deliverance, salvation, rather than punishment lies much closer to God’s heart and is more truly reflective of His nature. More often than not His judgments are tempered by grace and intended to discipline and restore people rather than destroy them. The history of Abimelech is a reminder that God can and does use judgment at His discretion and will do so when the circumstances warrant it. This history was included as a warning to Israel of how dangerous it is to do evil in the sight of the LORD, and how close they came to destruction every time they did evil in His sight. There is a day coming when grace and salvation will no longer be available, and judgment will fall on those who have continually refused to believe. The Lake of Fire is the final expression of divine retribution, the withdrawal of grace forever. Retribution is real, and to forget it is at our peril.
Second, God is sovereign over evil. Evil is by its very nature destructive, and those who walk in its ways always bring themselves to ruin eventually. Because we see this so often in our world, we can begin to think that God is not involved at all, and evil operates on its own, independent from God. But the Bible is clear that this is not the case. All those things associated with evil: pain, frustration, broken relationships, violence, and death are not in the world by accident and do not mean that the world or any part of it has slipped from God’s sovereign control. At one level these are the natural consequences of human beings refusing to submit to God’s rightful rule over them. But at a deeper level they are judgments that God Himself has placed in the world as continual reminders that not all is well between us and Him, that we are not the masters of our own fate and cannot rebel against our Creator without reaping the consequences. They are also warnings of greater judgment to come, beyond death, if we do not come back to God. We learn in Judges 9 some specific things about God’s sovereignty over evil. For example, commonplace events can be specific judgments of God. We would not know, if we were not told, that God was involved in chapter 9 at all. But we were told that He sent an evil spirit in the beginning of our passage today and in the end of the passage that God returned the evil of Abimelech in his death and that He also made all the evil of the men of Shechem return on their heads. Evil appears to run rampant in Judges 9, but in truth it is God sovereignly directing it to a particular and just outcome.
The history of Abimelech is not enjoyable to read, but like all parts of Scripture it is there for our good. The history itself bears witness to the precision of divine judgment. God will punish evildoers, there will be no unfinished business with God, all who have not submitted to His rule in their lives will be judged. This history warns us not to test God by choosing evil. It should make us deeply grateful to God for His mercy on us and it should drive us to renewed prayer for those we love and care about who continue to defy Him, that they would turn to Him and that He would not bring upon them the terrible retribution that they deserve.
[1]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[2]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[3]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.
[4]New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update. La Habra, CA: The Lockman Foundation, 1995.